I’ve been thinking about this more and more. According to the sidebar, this community is “A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.” Based on that I don’t think Plex qualifies.

Privacy: Plex clearly records the metadata of what you watch. When I used it, it would send me a report by email of what my “friends” were watching. Even with that turned off, their services still track telemetry.

Control: Plex has all of it. They can (and do) make unilateral changes to the service, how authentication works, where you can run it, etc.

So I ask, when you are hosting something that is entirely dependent on a commercial entity to function, is Plex really selfhosting in the spirit of this community?

  • tko@tkohhh.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 hours ago

    I won’t make any claims about other users, but I am using Plex for 100% legally obtained media, mostly by means of ripping physical media that I still have on my shelf. So, not everybody is using it for pirated content.

    • Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      Due to the DMCA by circumventing the copyright to rip your DVDs you are technically breaking the law. You would most definitely be considered a pirate.

      • tko@tkohhh.socialEnglish
        1·
        2 minutes ago

        I guess that depends on your definition of “piracy”… is it “breaking the law” or is it “stealing”?

        In any case, the point I was making is that some people use Plex with non-stolen media. I mostly see assumptions that it’s only used for stolen media, so I wanted to offer a counter-example.

      • tko@tkohhh.socialEnglish
        2·
        29 minutes ago

        Not sure if you’re implying that I torrent my media… but just to be clear I don’t torrent.

        • kiol@discuss.onlineEnglish
          1·
          22 minutes ago

          By definition, you are a pirate for ripping your purchased physical media! One can only imagine the depravity of then hosting that content for others! Straight to jail!